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Chuck sat restlessly in his hotel room. He was meeting an old friend for dinner at 7:00, but it seemed like an eternity away. He thumbed his phone, he toggled TV channels, and he poked at the novel he had started on the plane. In the end, he couldn’t spend more than a consecutive minute on any of them.“Why am I so agitated?” he asked himself, out loud. At last, he flung his Michael Chabon across the room. I gotta get out of here.Chuck stepped outside the Ritz into a brilliant, brisk, spring day. He stood in the center of Copley Square and circled slowly on the cobblestones. He frowned when he realized his old favorite newsstand was no longer there. He smiled at the lions in front of the Library. His smile broadened as he looked upon the reflection of H.H. Richardson’s church in the crystal blue panes of the Hancock building. As much as he loved this place, it was hard to believe he hadn’t been back to Boston in well over thirty years. He had gone to school here; come of age here; come out here. Why so long? he asked himself.“Where to?” he whispered under his breath. Walk down Boylston to the Public Garden? Newbury street? Pick up some souvenirs for dear hubby? Head up to The Fenway? In the end, his feet took him where he really wanted to go.Chuck crossed Huntington Avenue into the South End. When he passed Columbus, he realized how swanky his old neighborhood had become. It was polished and white, and straight. When Chuck had lived here, the South End was a neighborhood “in transition.” The truth was, it had been that for its entire history. Built in the eighteen-eighties for an upper-middle class that mostly never arrived, over the next one hundred years, the gorgeous collection of brownstones instead housed successive waves of immigrants, the great black migration, and, eventually, gay men.He passed the spot of his first mugging. And, shortly thereafter, he passed the second. The Jamaican barbecue place was now a French restaurant. That little Italian place with the five-dollar spaghetti had become an expensive tequila bar. The big house on the corner that used to host the wildest of raves was a quaint-looking bed and breakfast.Chuck traversed Tremont until he came to şişli escort his old street. For reasons that Chuck never learned, his block was populated with cherry trees rather than the maples and sycamores that towered over most of the neighborhood. That was one thing that hadn’t changed: The blossoms were past their peak and had mostly fallen to the brick sidewalk, but the scene was still strikingly beautiful. Halfway down the block, Chuck slowed. Was it this one? No, the railing is wrong. That’s it. Yes, with the double bow window.Chuck glanced around and then sat on the stoop. He’d spent many a morning in this very spot. Pink and white blossoms swirled and settled like drifting snow at his feet — just as they had so long ago.~~~Cheerios never tasted better. Chuck’s basement apartment didn’t get sunlight until afternoon, so on a bright morning like this one, he would take a cup of coffee and his breakfast to the shared front stairs. As he spooned sugary rolled oats, he watched cherry petals fall against the backdrop of an opal blue sky. How can everything be so beautiful and yet so fucked up?He felt a chill. He was just wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans. I should head back inside. But instead, he lingered. That handsome guy from the Chicken Soup Brigade should show up any minute.“Oh, hey, could I ask a favor?”Chuck turned and looked to the top of the stairs. The handsome Good Samaritan had already arrived.“I’m sorry to bug you,” he said, managing a half-smile. “Jim can’t get up and down the stairs anymore. I need to move his bed into the living room, and I really need a hand,” he said, holding his palms together in a pleading manner.Jim owned the building. He lived on the two main floors and rented the basement unit to Chuck, and the two floors above to a couple of women. He had full-blown AIDS and, in the six months Chuck had lived there, had really gone downhill fast. He wasn’t alone. There were several others on the block in various stages of decline. It was now rare that an ambulance did not block the narrow street at least once or twice a week. It was a collective nightmare.Check stepped through the vestibule and followed the handsome man into mecidiyeköy escort Jim’s apartment.“No matter how many times I walk in here, I’m always awestruck,” Chuck said as he waved toward the meticulous cornice work, the hand-painted patterned walls, the ornate fireplace, and the huge bow windows.“Oh, hey, I’m Chuck.”“Yes. Sorry. I’m Peter,” Peter said. He shook Chuck’s hand and locked eyes. So fucking cute, Chuck thought. He liked Peter’s coal-black eyes and his warm, somewhat lecherous smile sneaking out behind a full mustache. He was tall and fit, like a runner. Italian? Greek? Jewish, maybe? Chuck asked himself.There was an awkward pause as Peter processed how he was going to put Chuck to use, at the same time, part of his brain was distracted by how he wanted to use Chuck. Chuck was stocky, and muscular, with bright blue eyes and a boyish face. Peter guessed that Chuck was no older than twenty-four; six years his junior. Yum.“Hey, Sweetie,” Jim called from the dining room. He was seated in a lounge chair that Peter had moved from the living room. He was in a velour dressing gown and was so bone-thin that his teeth stuck out. His hair seemed to recede farther every time Chuck saw him, and his forehead had two large sores. Chuck averted his eyes.“Aye, Sir,” Chuck called back, nodding to Jim’s Navy past that was evident by the black and white photos of a younger, healthier Jim that decorated the entryway.Peter and Chuck commenced carrying the bed and mattress up from the lower (ground) floor. It took five or six trips to get all the parts and pieces to the living room. Jim kept the heat on high and the windows sealed tight. The air was a stifling, stale mix of aged laundry basket, bad breath, and Vick’s Vapor Rub. Chuck started to help Peter reassemble the bed, but at a certain point, he felt like he was suffocating and had to bolt.“You o.k.?” Peter asked, putting a hand on Chuck’s muscular shoulder.“Yeah, sorry, I don’t what happened,” Chuck said, embarrassed.“Oh, I think I do,” Peter said, staring at a weeping cherry tree. “Being around dying people is never pleasant. And when you think it could be you — soon. And you have no idea why — it’s fucking terrifying. I’ve had more than one panic attack, I assure you.”When Chuck turned to look at Peter, he realized they both had tears in their eyes. “Hey, I have almost a whole pot of coffee downstairs.”They sat in uncomfortable tag-sale metal chairs at the small, round folding table that passed as Chuck’s dining table. They looked through French doors toward the now unkempt back garden that had been one of Jim’s many passions.“How long you been out?” Peter asked.Chuck laughed, “Ha! To be honest I probably only have a leg and an arm out of the closet at this point. I only broke up with my college girlfriend a year ago. My mom knows — has always known, it turns out. Most of my friends. No one at work.”“Best to keep it that way,” Peter said with a toast of his coffee cup. “I’m not out at work, either.”“My timing was great!” Chuck said with false enthusiasm. “Stepped right into the ‘Gay Plague.’ Can you even qualify as gay if you never have sex with anyone?” Chuck continued with a cracked voice. Peter thought he was making a joke but then saw tears were back in Chuck’s pretty blue eyes.“Do you think they did it to us? The Immoral Majority, or the CIA, or whatever?” Chuck asked.“I would not put it past them, but no. They just don’t give a shit, because it’s us,” Peter answered.They sat in sad silence for a bit, until Peter asked, “So, how long has it been? I mean, since you had sex?”“I’ll tell if you will,” Chuck said with a hint of flirtation.“Hand job with a guy at the ‘Y,’ a couple weeks ago. They say hand jobs are ok as long as you stay away from the spunk. Whoever ‘they’ is. And blood is a no-no, of course. So, there have been a lot of hand jobs the last few months. Before that … my boyfriend, almost a year ago. He was way back in the closet. Married. AIDS freaked him out. Loser. Now you, you tease.”“Literally right before I moved in here. I blew a cute Northeastern guy in The Fenway on my way to check this place out. Once I moved in, and got to know Jim, and witnessed the godforsaken ambulance parade, I quit, cold turkey. Now it’s just me and my toys. It’s the fucking worst.”“I’m getting pretty fantastic at hand jobs,” Peter said with a salacious smile.Chuck smiled back. He looked at Peter’s warm brown eyes, his high cheekbones, the full lips, and the dark stubble spread over his dimpled chin. “I’m not letting you near me until I have a shower.”
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